Winding Colours on a Flower Spindle
Happy Halloween or Samhain if you celebrate it. This holiday has always evoked feelings of tenderness and introspection. Traditionally, in the West, it was a time to mark the changing of the seasons, when the harvest had been gathered and the daylight dims, signaling a transition to a slower pace. A day and moment to honor and connect with loved ones who have passed, and to feed our ancestors with reverence, and serve other hungry ghosts from our tables. Sharing meals by candlelight, while leaving offerings in the moonlight. The notion of providing something savory or sweet that penetrates a gossamer veil of the unseen, has always struck me as an inherently generous act.
As an Asian American Halloween is an adopted holiday for me, and one (like many others) that I’ve carved out to make my own in a bizarre pastiche like the unsettling turnip heads in Ireland, or our grinning pumpkin Jack o’ Lanterns here in the states. Not having any ties to Celtic culture, and being a POC means that like much of my life, I have always been an outsider caught in the betwixt and between. Seeking and developing my own ways of communing through the darkness and fog. Perhaps this is why those liminal spaces perpetually draw me in. Not having a set ritual, or living elders to guide me, I’ve researched and sought a deeper authenticity to communing with Nature, my ancestral family, and ghosts that I’ve never known who inhabited a land that is oceans apart. The ritual then becomes one of self-awareness, an examining of identity., much like the creative art practice that I engage with daily.
When all you have is a blank canvas you learn to paint what is personal and expressive to you. A language steeped in the symbology of the soul, it is a rockier terrain to traverse, but nothing rewarding has ever come easy in my life.
Forging my own ways of participating, healing generational melancholy, acknowledging the sacrifices that our elders have made all wrapped up in the trappings of acid green bubbling cauldron concoctions, wart nosed witches on brooms, the drunken path of bats flying at dusk on their leathery wings, while whisps of the scent of chocolate linger in the air, as kids screech and holler with glee, the sound of the pleasant solid thunk of mini candy bars in plastic pumpkin buckets, and sticky tootsie roll pop wrappers scattered on lawns. All of it I soaked in with happiness and joy.
I’ve always valued the expressive freedom and creativity that Halloween provides. There is a spaciousness and acceptance in the possibility of dressing up as whatever you wished to be without judgement or restriction from society, adults, or cultural norms. Would that we could all be as accepting of each other every day no matter how outlandish or disarming our appearance may be.
To celebrate the candied joy and feeling of unbound possibility I’ve created the Flower Spindle watercolor palette. The colours remind me very much of the Alphonse Mucha’s artwork, that hung on my walls, and the belief that beauty should not be confined only to the bourgeoisie in the Art Nouveau movement. You can find this palette in the shop along with some other surprise treats. Wishing you a season of unfettered inspiration.